


inventory

by shelter



Category: Warcraft - All Media Types, World of Warcraft
Genre: Ambiguous/Open Ending, Canon Compliant, Closure, F/M, Grief/Mourning, Healing, One Shot, Post BFA, War of the Thorns | Burning of Teldrassil, post-fourth war, short fiction
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-05-27
Updated: 2020-05-27
Packaged: 2021-03-02 18:41:13
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence, No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,009
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/24401479
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/shelter/pseuds/shelter
Summary: Post-Fourth War. Leaving everything behind, Delaryn Summermoon returns to Darkshore.
Relationships: Delaryn Summermoon/Ferryn
Comments: 2
Kudos: 3





	inventory

_"'No' is also an answer to my prayers, as well"  
_ \- Leslie Jamison

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* * *

* * *

_Forsaken Banner, torn, freckled with blood. Left at Tirisfal Glades safe house–_

Delaryn Summermoon can't stop her left hand from twitching. It refuses to stay still when she tells her comrades of her decision to return. As expected, her declaration hits their little pack of lost souls like a bomb, fragmenting the unity they've had since the Dark Lady's departure. Some argue and try to talk her out of it. Others are supportive. When she tells Calia Menethil of her choice, the older woman lays her hands on the table, a mocking tent of patience. Delaryn doesn't understand Calia's way – the searing embrace of the Light, or how she is always so calm. What she can't understand unearths in her a deep hollow of fear. What she fears rises into anger. She prefers this. It's so much easier to hate Calia for her steadfastness than to face her own doubt. But Calia, voice unwavering, tells her, "I'm not your queen. Do what you must. Seek your own way."

* * *

_Azerite charges, a handful of smoke bombs. Parting gifts–_

She leaves at dawn, when the setting moon is a curved scythe in the watercolour-ed sky. Her comrades follow her to where the valleys descend from the throats of the mountains and the road to Stormwind begins. One presses her flaking lips to Delaryn's shaking knuckles, then touches her forehead to them: a traditional farewell greeting from – a long time ago. Delaryn doesn't want to her comrade to invoke the goddess. Her belief has become ashes, her heart a ruined monument to the fiery faith that burned it down. So no mention of the moon, no farewell blessings. Just the clinched, lipless line of a smile – the last thing she sees as Delaryn begins to walk away.

* * *

_Utility knife, ground sheet, field dressings, compass, flint and steel, coil of rope, extra socks. Fees for passage–_

Only one ship is available to Kalimdor. "What's a lass like you doing travelling alone?" asks the goblin captain. So Delaryn shows her machetes, seething with shadows, and he shuts up. The ship groans as it sets out into the ocean, its hull festooned with the grey stars of bird droppings. Stormwind harbour lies swaddled in fog. So she doesn't see the land recede into the distance. She's glad to be rid of this continent. Here, she's learnt that the Light heals but can't bestow peace. Her brothers, sisters and Calia have no answers. And she, like this ship, is adrift on an unstable ocean. Her left hand shakes. She clenches it, her knuckles turning black. The other crew and passengers give her a wide berth.

* * *

_A Dark Ranger's Ring of Shadow. Shrine offering–_

On a stopover in Zuldazar, she wanders away from the port and finds an assembly of Tauren totems in a glade. There, at the base of the structures, sits a tiny, pathetic healing fountain. It reminds Delaryn of the Moonwells in Ashenvale, so she goes to take a closer look. But all she sees is mirror image of her crimson eyes, her neck veined with blood vessels, the spray of freckles on her face now a rough rash of discoloured blackheads. She stabs at her likeness at the water – and comes face-to-face with the shrine's Tauren guardian. The collar of muscles around his jaw tucks into a frown. His breathing reminds Delaryn of a gasping Horde siege engine. Her hands flirt with her machetes. Then, the guardian unrolls a bracelet from his arms: an ornament of charms, so large that it's a necklace to her. "Your journey is harsh, young pilgrim," he says. "Go with the blessings of our Earth Mother." And he leaves her standing there, sacred water drying on her fingers.

* * *

_Garter, two machetes. Left in Orgrimmar–_

The first thing Delaryn sees when she reaches Orgrimmar are its spiked towers piercing the falling egg yolk of the setting sun. Passing through the its gates feels like re-entering a dark vault of a past she wants to forget. To Delayrn, the city is uncoiling with life: beating blood, fogging breaths, the tick-tocking of languages. It's too crowded, too narrow, too – Orgrimmar. There are other Forsaken here, and she falls into step around them, her kindred out of necessary. She begins to hear whispers, the call of Undeath, reminding her of her place among them. Outside Grommash Hold, where the Dark Lady and Blightcaller's orders echoed with almost divine repetition, the whispers combine into a single voice. "The Dark Lady commands you to submit," it says. But now the Hold sits silent like a sleeping feline, and her master – no, tormentor – is far away from here. She closes her eyes, tries to wipe the memory of her Queen's voice from her head. All that's left is the sound of the wind blasting through the canyons.

* * *

_Armoured spaulders, cloak. Parting gifts–_

On the road to the front, Delayrn is joined two rogues, a Forsaken warrior and Sin'dorei veteran. Together, they head north through the worsening weather, the roads turning into black, serpent-patterned slush. At night, when her Sin'dorei companion sleeps, the Forsaken rogue talks about her life. Lordaeron. The Undercity. Rejection. Betrayal. Endless war. Delaryn resents the stream of chatter, until the rogue notices her unsteady hands – "Your hands are always shaking," she tells Delaryn, "like I'm always bleeding." When she smiles, Delayrn sees a tide of congealed dark blood swelling on her gumline, staining her teeth. The rogue takes her hand. She fits three half-bone fingers into Delayrn's bigger palm. The touch is fleeting, purposeful. For the first time in a long while, Delayrn realises she hasn't been touched. Still, her hand will not stop quaking. By morning, they reach the front. Everyone goes their separate ways. Delayrn forgets to ask their names.

* * *

_Gauntlets. Left behind–_

The Horde commander at the front is a troll who sits by the road, talking with his Tauren and Orcish subordinates. Delayrn doesn't want trouble, but she's willing to put an arrow in all their heads just to cross over into Kaldorei territory. When she draws her longbow, the Tauren soldiers point at her necklace. The Orcs have a word with the commander. At the threshold, he waves her through and tells her the road to Ashenvale is a pathway of death. "But you probably already know that," he adds. Soon the whine of the siege engines go silent, and the artificial light of Horde garrison falls behind. The first tree she touches bears scorch marks, its bark splintering under her hand. She walks, waiting to be ambushed by arrows. When there's nothing but the sound of the forest, she isn't sure if she's upset or fortunate.

* * *

_Boots. Left behind –_

She walks into Ashenvale, into the geometrics of puddled sunlight, into the forests of her youth. In the warped haze of her mind, she should know every creek, every glade, every ancient tree. But she looks at the forest now as if through a filter of blood. Even barefoot, she feels the forest paths as viscous mud, like wading through bodies. Her senses don't respond to the forest. But they respond to something else: death. Wisps look like Kaldorei and Horde corpses dangling from trees like nightmare ornaments. Every shrub and tree has developed a thirst for blood. She tries – strains – to remember her days in Ashenvale. Instead all she has are the ghostly imprints of names – Cordessa Briarbow, Anaris Windwood, Tavar, Ferryn – names whose faces shift in the flare and fall of sunshine in the woods.

* * *

_Necklace of charms. Moonwell offering–_

Delayrn begins to hear the buzz of daily life though the trees when she stumbles across her first Moonwell on the outskirts of Astranaar. It sits in a blush of sunlight, flanked by buildings mummified by fire. As she approaches it, the ruins whisper to her. She sees the patterns of earth – or blood – splashed on its the wooden gates. Yet the water within is glowing, almost pristine save for wayward flecks of ash. So, she isn't sure why her reflection in the water looks so cloudy, as if she's disappearing from the edges. But her face is still ridged with frowns, flushed with a veil of decay. When she finally tears her eyes away from her visage, she sees scorch marks around Kaldorei-shaped imprints on the inside of the ruins. At the edge of the Moonwell lies a strewn puzzle of bones and cartilage in the shape of a body. She imagines its mouth filling with shadows. It beckons to her. "Join us," it says. She flees.

* * *

_Cloak of concealment. Left behind–_

Delayrn is within an hour from Darkshore when the whispers from the forest become an endless chorus of pleas. So she's forced off the path, into a glade, to calm her frantic head. Moments later, in the crystalline starlight, Sentinels appear. They meld into the open, on sabercats and accompanied by owls. Delaryn watches them as if through a tracery of grey rags, their forms spectral. In the centre, a Kaldorei commander comes into view. Delaryn thinks she looks familiar. The whispers intensify. Then, a spark of recognition hits. Shandris – Shandris Feathermoon. "Murder her. She's the reason you're like this," the whispers say, "don't fight your bloodlust." In the moonlight, Delaryn sees Shandris stare right at her position. And the whispers erupt into a scream, splitting her head. When she glances again, the sentinels are gone. The whispers gradually recede. But her hands don't stop quivering.

* * *

_Arrows and quiver, longbow. Buried and left behind–_

When she reaches the beach at Darkshore, the onslaught of dawn is just beginning. The dark, lifeless bulk of Teldrassil looms across the strait, a tower of agony, trailing tails of ash in the wind. Here, in full view of the Horde encampment on the far shore and a fleet of Eleven destroyers, Delayrn walks into the shallows. Bones litter the sand, but everything else has been churned and tossed by the broken blades of waves. Here, Delayrn knows, the Goddess Elune left her to die. Here, the Dark Lady took everything from her. Her hope, her life, her right to die, her peace – yet there's nothing here that stands to mark that fateful night battle. No footprints. No bodies. No graves. Nothing. Not even her own tears. The landscape has moved on.

She kneels in the low tide, tries to recall the last time she was here, gazing at Teldrassil. She dredges her memory to remember Ferryn's, her beloved's, words: "Release your hatred and fear." She tries. Now, the second time on the shore where she lost everything, all she has are the whispers singing praises to death, erasing Ferryn's voice. Her hands still shudder. Then, the rising sun torches everything in the brightest white.

* * *

_Memories of all things held dear. Moonwell offering–_

She still has sand under her fingers when she wanders all the way back to Astranaar – back to the place where she last felt peace in her old life – back to the Moonwell. She sees someone has taken her necklace of charms. She sees the ghost of a daytime moon drifting on the water. When she peers over the edge, she too is almost invisible. Just her eyes aflame in wrathful red. With nothing to lose now, she strips all her remaining armour and walks into the well. Weightless, she floats. The water stings, a prickly sizzle at the edges of her decomposing skin.

The reflection of the sky in the clear water makes Delaryn think she's swimming in clouds. Her whispers mumble listlessly. Bubbles begin to gather on her skin. A crowd of wisps hover around the edge of the well. So she plunges underwater, blowing the air out her ears. She thinks of Elune, whose faint and translucent moon hangs above. Delaryn raises her shivering hand to it, as if to touch the lunar shade in the sky. She strains for it, arm outstretched, until her hands close around it. She holds it hard until her trembling, finally, stops.

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_END_

**Author's Note:**

> Thanks for reading!
> 
> The quote at the beginning of the story is from Leslie Jamison's memoir _The Recovering: Intoxication and its Aftermath_.
> 
> This work references & name-drops some characters from the Warcraft novella _Elegy_ , which is the story of the War of the Thorns from the Kaldorei perspective. 
> 
> I wrote this story to give some depth to a very tragic character, to allow her to find her own way. Did it make sense? Do you think Delaryn Summermoon's story would end any differently?


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